Messier 29, the "less impressive" cluster

As quoted by the SEDS organization on its Messier Catalog site, "Messier 29 is a rather coarse and less impressive cluster."

Huh.

Kind of took that as a challenge, so I captured what I think is pleasing view of this simple open galactic cluster of blue giants, 7,200 light years distant. Charles thought enough of it in 1764 to write it down.

250 x 15 sec. JPEG frames at 1600 ISO, unguided. 250 bias, 173 flat calibration frames.

This image taken without field flattener and only flat/bias calibration. Rather than post-process dark frame calibration, the camera's built-in noise reduction (dark frame subtraction) was applied to each exposure, shortening the post-process time.